My father was a country doctor and rode horse back for a radius of 15 to 20 miles to treat his patients, he carried his medicine in a pair of saddle bags across his saddle. Although he never kept any hounds, he was very fond of the chase and loved to hear them run.

There was a man named Lawerence Amos who kept hounds and would run fox all around where we lived. My father would ride his horse and take me up behind him and go with them and take me along. In this way I began my foxhunting career, as near as I can remember it was when I was about 10 years old, which would have been around 1890.

There was a Negro named Tillman Gross who kept 3 or 4 hounds and hunted with Mr. Amos. He owned this old horn and always carried it hunting with him. He owed my father a doctor bill, and like most Negroes of that era, he was not able to pay it. One night after the race was over, Tillman was blowing in the hounds and my father asked to blow the horn, after he blew it, my father asked Tillman what he would take for it and he said he did not want to sell it. My father told him, "Tillman, you owe me a big bill that you are not able to pay, let me have the horn and we will call it even". This was agreed too and my father hung it around his neck and we went home

There was a man named Tanner Green who came to our community right after the civil war and brought a strain of blueticked, well made, rough haired hounds with him. They were good foxhounds, much better than the old black and tan hounds most people had at that time. I have often thought they must have been of the old Bywaters strains, at that time no one had ever heard of a Walker or July hound and a pedigree had never been heard of either.

I started fox hunting with a pair of these hounds, and I raised a pair of pups I got from another Negro who hunted with Mr. Amos. I look back over the years and think of the hundreds of hounds I have bred and owned and wonder if any of these were any better than "old Rambler and Blue".

I started my fox hunting career with this old horn tied around my neck with a homemade leather string. At the large end I cut notches in the band every time I caught a fox or cat and although it is almost worn out they can still be seen. One day a puppy got hold of it and chewed up the mouthpiece, I made another one with aluminum and it has also gotten broken someway, but it will still "blow them in".

I am now 87 years old, all my hounds are gone and I have hung up my horn and ended over 60 years of foxhunting, but I hope someone will always take good care of this old horn that I started hunting with in the dim and distant past. Dr. H.C.Fountain………..